Probably not a subject to merely dabble in for an evening, but I have views upon this - and everybody has a right to hear my opinion on the matter ( see http://repwblic.informe.com/viewtopic.php?t=42 ---- http://repwblic.informe.com/viewtopic.php?t=320 ) - perhaps especially that fringe element whose ideas about republicanism are taken from the UK's propaganda against it over the past two hundred years - or supposedly Sinn Fein's for it over the past fifty years in Northern Ireland, but let us not go there. Suffice to say that few people ( let us say less than 1% ) actually have the capacity to understand any political argument and thus their capacity for political action is no more than scratching a cross on a ballot paper and hurling bricks and bottles at each other - unless you make available to them both Private and - even worse - Public Armaments, in which case you could easily unleash a crime wave if not actually a civil war : which are two major reasons to object to the idea of democracy if it is deemed to depend upon The People owning armaments either individually or collectively ( " The People " as often as not excludes a class of non-citizens whose ownership of many things is outlawed.) This does not mean that the gun-happy USA is full of criminals and insurgents, but I do mean that its ' democratic ' gun laws are misconstrued - not merely in terms of common sense but also in terms of Republicanism.

Republicanism has been accused of amorality in the detached view that it takes of human affairs, or even immorality and evil in the person of Machiavelli, but Republicanism was re-born along with Humanism in the Re-naissance and its view point is humanistic : it does not damn people for their failings in the way that the forms of Christianity that it opposed did, but nor does it offer Confession and Absolution - Republicanism offers Observation and Revolution enabled by Reasoning upon the Rationality of the facts observed. Whilst the gun lobby in the USA is much associated with something that describes itself as " Republican Party " ( - an oxymoron, because by definition nobody forming a party to campaign for achieving sectarian control over a government is a republican - ) the arguments that are typically rehearsed over it seem to me to be way off beam in terms of Republicanism's morality, which is expressed in the idea of " The Prime Right " - i.e. whatever other rights we invent, however construed, they are all dependent upon " The Right to Life."

Therefore in Republicanism the considerations are not " How many armaments can I have ? Who am I allowed to kill ? Can't I just kill them a little bit ? Why can't I take my AK-47 to kindergarten ? Mummy, why can't we just pay for things in stores - like other people do ? "

" The Prime Right " is not the right not to be killed by others but a right over one's own life - the right to choose to live or to choose to die - and with it traditionally comes a duty towards the lives of others - the duty to protect " The Prime Right " of all who choose to live or to die. In Modern Republicanism " The Prime Right " has been argued to apply not merely to other human beings but also to all other species, even to landscapes and whole eco-systems because as human beings we have acquired such powers to destroy the world we live in we must accept the responsibilities that go with it - " The Prime Right " now extends universally to all things, but exactly what that means in practice is yet to be worked out.

One thing well understood from " The Prime Right " is that it can be argued from both the positions of those who take arms to protect " The Prime Right " of others - and those who refuse to take up arms to protect " The Prime Right " of others ( or indeed of themselves, although they would hope presumeably not to be killed in return for refusing to kill.) But there is no rigid bondary here or sharp division between Republican militarist and Republican pacifist, they are citing one and the same principle but it is not easily formulated because it has many aspects and various consequences. The arguments to be made about the possession of Private and Public Armaments ( as I chose to title this thread ) help to illustrate it a bit : handguns and militias seem perfectly normal to Americans and possibly something to be proud of and patriotic about ... but over here on Cambria's shore they look to me - at best - unfortunate ... and I feel that the arguments made in their favour with the 2nd Ammendment claimed to be essential to the Constitution of the USA have nothing to do with Republicanism, albeit I do understand that the USA has its own social and legal history and ... ugh ... what can you say ?

they mostly reason according to short term gratifications which lead them to do stupid things that are not even in their own personal interest let alone the public interest. In many respects all that can be done by republicans is to stand and watch the whole miserable pattern of things that we know how to avoid unfold again and again and again - because such people will neither learn for themselves nor be advised by us.

Of course the Americans are immune to people laughing at them over this : in so many of their minds if a child can stagger to their feet with some kind of a gun in their hands then they clearly qualify for membership in a militia. Now what be an interesting and apparently quite likely development is that in some USA's states at least it is going to be able to define these drones as being a means for personal defence : Nintendo will be creating programmes for .. well how young will they be ? ... I have seen children less than two years old playing these shoot-em-up video games and it wouldn't surprise me if a child younger than one could handle the controls like a demon. It is certainly not inconceivable that some bunch of irresponsible criminal infantile inadequates hyped up on coc porn and cola and with enough credit on their mums' VISA cards could purchase a few of these long range drones and fuel them up to cruise the world competing to kill various sorts of people and claiming their actions to be patriotic and peace-enforcing - you know the sort, all murder-hood and cafflo-sly - score one for the man, a half for the woman, but score no points for dropping bombs on other kid's birthday parties because the balloons mark out the targets ... oh ... apparently they don't need their mums' VISA cards : they can join the USAF and actually be paid in cola and all the coc-porn they can eat - AND be allowed to stay up until WHEN in the evening ?

What is going on at the moment in the United Kingdom is that the politicians are conniving at licensing ' their ' police forces to carry guns - note : being subjects not citizens the police are not ' our ' police but ' their ' police forces. Americans are perfectly aware of the consequences of having armed police forces full of people who have watched too many ' Dirty Harry ' movies ... but there will still be this difference : in America it is legal for citizens to carry guns and to shoot back and you can plead self-defence, whereas in the United Kingdom we are not allowed any guns to defend ourselves against anyone or anything. True, in the USA the preponderance of weapons inclines their police forces to shoot first, then interrogate and only finally to offer first aid ... but ... if the United Kingdom is going to also make weapons a commonplace on our streets then it is unfortunately still best and only just - if the police are supposedly ' civilians in uniform ' - that other civilians can also be armed to the same degree if they choose to be.

I am inclined to argue that the only people who want to possess guns are those who want to use them, and whether they are Chief Police Officers or otherly socially isolated and emotionally challenged individuals such as Home Secretaries, they will contrive explanations to justify killing people - " I shot him in the back because I mistook his zimmer frame for a machine gun " - " I was thinking about how happily married I am - was - when I accidentally pulled the trigger and failed to kill the sargeant and my other colleagues " - " I can assure the prosecution that when I shot her it was completely by accident : it was a miss-fire, and I never stamped on her head afterwards - this was in the middle of a very difficult and dangerous demonstration in which there was definitely a risk of public disorder, and they were both particularly aggressive pacifists - and probably lesbians too, My Lord !!! "

Whilst I grant the fact that in organising any demonstration, not that I bother nowerdays, stewards should be pleased to work with the police and never leave it to the police to intercede against troublemakers who imagine that demonstrations are opportunities to pick a fight with someone - but in my experience the people who come to demonstrations looking to start a fight are the police themselves, that rather too many of them take their uniform to be both a licence for thuggery and an indemnity against being charged with a breach of the peace. I observe that the more bright shiny bits on their shoulders the more licenced they feel to do this : there is an inverse relationship between the pips on their shoulders and the level of any real responsibility which they shoulder, those with gold braid being the very worst. Whether we have police with guns or not we should be sure that we all have the same right to carry the same weapons as the police, and to be extremely wary of ending up in the same situation as they are in the USA.

I kept meaning to tack this onto this thread : this is not all of the material which made up the handouts, I had photo-collaged it into this arrangement. I thought at the time that I stashed it ... gosh - 2006 ... how good a conception it was, and how accurately it played on the way that people covet what they have seen in the movies etc. It seems to me that most have little conception of the dangers involved in keeping such things, even in the United States of America where those who own such weapons stand a fair chance of shooting themselves or being shot by those who love them i.e. members of your own family are far more likely to be motivated by a strong impulse to kill you than a stranger wandering by - so why put the means for others to kill you within easy reach ? Think it through : it is not rational, given the abundance of incidences of the family gun being used to kill members of the family, usually in the hands of a husband killing a wife or killing their children in front of her to spite her before killing her and then the dog and then himself ... assuming that he doesn't use up all of his bullets in trying to take his out his final vengeance upon the budgerigar first ... turning up in Accident and Emergency having used up his final bullet on it and having still missed it creased his own scalp ...

... But ! - Surely ! - Out there there are dangerously psychotic people who want to kill you and ... well - think that on through on the facts : if you do meet such a gun-happy-chappy who points a gun at you and fires - you will never get to your gun before you are dead ; if he doesn't fire at you and you are stupid enough to reach for a weapon then you had better hope that he is mad as cheese and doesn't notice because the rational thing to do when somebody goes for their gun is to shoot first lest you be killed - and forget Roy Rodgers and wrapping a handkerchief around your arm : a real bullet may make a small entry hole as in the movies but as it enters the body the conical shock wave that it generates before it means that there is no exit hole - it will rip flesh the size of a tennis ball from you and take it away with it, which is why they never pointed those camaras at their backs ... more importantly the idea that scary gun-happy psychopaths are lurking all over the place intending to kill you has in all likelyhood come out of your own head and guns should not be put in the hands of paranoid people ...

... However I am prepared to make an exception to that rule within the precincts of Y Senedd Cymru and I am prepared to stand there insisting that our selected representatives always have fully automatic weapons with exceptionally sensitive hair triggers with the safety catches always off whilst they are seated alone there together in command of our nation in The Bunker. I am even prepared to sneak in and hide in the gallery when there is some tense deliberation upon what lies to tell us and shout out - " REPUBLICAN !!!! " - I wonder if ' TELESHOP ' stock Kevlar onesies ... ?

I caught about half of this programme on BBC 4 television late last evening and I was surprised that anybody could be around to capture such an escalation within a society which basically demonstrates all of the problems surrounding the spontaneous formation of unregulated militias ... the disturbing end of the programme is that the apparently mild-mannered and otherwise law-abiding leader who created their local Autodefensa - José Manuel Mireles Valverde - ended up in jail because he refused the deal with the Mexican government when they offered to convert it into a properly regulated Rural Defence Force and issue it with standard military grade weapons ... He refused because he realised that the Autodefensa had been infiltrated by the very drug cartel that he was fighting - and apparently this cartel has ended up contriving to continue to manufacture and export drugs whilst fighting off the other cartels with the sanction of the government and are thus fully and officially in control of the communities which they were previously oppressing who were trying to fight them off by creating the Autodefensa ... This reminds me of the way in which the local gentry in Cardiff who were involved in piracy and smuggling took over control of the local government for their purposes in the 17c ... In the programme, note how when the Autodefensa call a public meeting by way of trying to make themselves accountable the local people are furious with them and demand The Rule of Law - not revenge - this documentary features graphic footage of the Autodefensa beating, torturing and executing those they suppose to be suspects or guilty : food for thought for those who fondly imagine that their proposed militias are going to be automatically " Republican " in their character - note the lone-gun " patrolling " the American side of the border building up his " militia " from out of a rather dubious personal following of other misfits ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06q7csp/storyville-20152016-9-cartel-land

This Sundance award-winning film is a fearless exposé of the terrifying Mexican drug war and the cartels that operate in and around the Mexico/US border. With astonishing access, it follows two vigilante leaders fighting the power of Mexico's drug gangs on both sides of the border.

Tim 'Nailer' Foley heads the Arizona Border Recon, whilst in Mexico Dr José Mireles, a Michoacán-based doctor, runs the Autodefensas. From the setting up of the civilian group, the documentary follows the early success of the Autodefensas under the charismatic doctor. The rebel militia rousts the enemy, capturing Knights Templar gang henchmen even as the authorities attempt to impede its progress. But as the vigilantes' influence increases, so do questions about its conduct and motives. Are these new sheriffs any more reliable than those they have come to usurp?

With twists and turns that defy expectation, Cartel Land is a gripping, at times harrowing exploration of the drugs trade.

Community self-defense groups, better known as " Autodefensas " ( self-defenders ) or " Policia Comunitaria " ( Community Police ) or " Policia Popular " ( People's Police ) are vigilante self-defense groups that arose in the Gulf and South Mexico regions between 2012 and 2013. Mexico is currently conducting a regularization of these groups to act as Rural Police in order to avoid clashes between the paramilitaries and the military itself. ... For this reason, on February 24, 2013 a doctor from the community of La Ruana, José Manuel Mireles Valverde and some land-owners, like Hipólito Mora, Estanislao Beltrán and Alberto Gutiérrez, took up arms against the Templar Cartel and all criminal groups that wanted to impose dominance in the area, entering a new phase in the war against drug trafficking. ... As civilian open-carry of weapons is restricted in Mexico, and because federal forces could not legally distinguish between armed-civilian convoys and drug-cartel convoys, they started a hard process of regularization of these militias. ... Other members did not join, arguing fear of disarmament and distrust in the government that left them alone for so long. The groups are currently divided into registered ( Rurales ) and non-registered groups ( Autodefensas,) some of the last are being persecuted by the authorities for failing to register their heavy weapons. ...

... Days before the shooting Ms Gilt had used social media to support the right to own guns and boasted that her son knew how to shoot. ... “All of ours know how to shoot too. Even my 4-year-old gets jacked up to target shoot the .22,” she wrote in a Facebook posting. ... As well as a personal account Ms Gilt has a Facebook page called “Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense” ...

... Ms Gilt was driving to her sister’s home near Jacksonville, Florida, when the youngster fired a single shot into the driver’s seat. ... Ms Gilt, 31, is in a stable condition and faces criminal charges after her son found a fully loaded .45 handgun next to his child booster seat and pulled the trigger. ... The bullet passed through her back and exited out of her stomach. ... Police found a handgun on the floor of the vehicle and the boy was unrestrained in the child booster seat. ...

... Ms Gilt, 31, is in a stable condition and faces criminal charges after her son found a fully loaded .45 handgun next to his child booster seat and pulled the trigger. ... She has yet to be interviewed by police as doctors have said she is not medically fit to make a statement. ... The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office said Ms Gilt could face a negligence charge if it was found the boy had easy access to the gun. ...

Here is the amendment as ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, then-Secretary of State: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

... I am just bunging this down for a quick note for later - " necessary to the security of a free state " - the American gun lobby tend to explain this in terms of their government being subverted, that they will need to bear arms to defend " the free state " against those who have created " the slave state." There is something to this argument, but it then gets over-extended to justify the personal possession of weapons for their owners to use as they please and not as part of " A well regulated militia " and so guns end up in the hands of irresponsible people - infants even ... but instead of thinking about the literal words of The Second Ammendment why not think about the intention behind it i.e. the defense of " The Free State " - ?

I am thinking in much more ordinary ways about this issue : if carrying a gun as a loner is not acceptable but carrying a gun as part of an organised and responsible group of citizens who are regulated to uphold and support the law is, what about thinking about the offensive / defensive uses of computer software ? Everybody expects to have a key to their front door and to be able to lock it without having to hand over a key to the government or indeed to anybody else unless they wish to. Likewise we have " keys " to our computers in passwords to enter them and if switching the computer on is like coming in through the front door, then the access that we give others electronically is by analogy like the use of our letter box by the post office. Our opening a window to look outside to see what is going on is like ... opening a window ... we can choose to respond to a call on VOIP and speak the words we please to the caller because it is like the telephone - ah ! - everything to do with computers is " like a telephone " and indeed not only can computers be monitored like telephones because they rely on the same technology but there is in fact a law to make that so.

Now you may say that this is an American law dai - what is that to do with us ? The answer is that since 1994 every microchip manufactured complies with this law - yes : every microchip even if not connected to a telephone line ... they can not only bug your mobile phone because it is a small computer connected to a telephone network, they can contrive to use the micro-chips embedded in all sorts of domestic electronics to eavesdrop on you ... you can switch off your mobile phone, but in many cases now you can not remove the battery and they can switch it on without you knowing that it is switched on because it is a programmable device which can be sent a " SMURF " bug to knobble the bobble which you think is switching it off. Now as you know I am an advocate of " The Open Conspiracy - THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY !!! " and although I have commercial encryption software in my computers I decline to use it because I do not want to live in such a society as this, racked with secrecy which is generally accepted because The People in Wales have been taught that lying is acceptable - NO : SECRECY WRECKS ALL RELATIONSHIPS ... THINK ABOUT YOUR OWN !

But privacy is not the same as secrecy : parents are not being secretive when they refuse to answer the door when some insolent anti-social rude child is trying to break it down ... nor are they necessarily trying to spice up their sex life by experimenting with new ideas : they are most likely huddled together in the wardrobe as their last refuge lest the lousy little Democrat smashes his way into their room ... in all likelihood they are having a very earnest discussion as to whether this child is really theirs or has been substituted for the one they elected for ... which - quite naturally - is a delicate matter which they obviously want to discuss in private ... over a cup of tea ... ah ! - the TeasMaid boils and they breath a sigh of relief and climbing out of the wardrobe they reach for sanity - " STOP RIGHT THERE ! " - the unnaturally loudly infantile voice booms out of the ... TeasMaid ... television ... radio ... computer ... The Speak Your Weight Machine ... from all three of their mobile phones ... and most shockingly of all - from both Mum and Dad's knickers ... Now I do not know what you think about the corporal punishment of children but I do not care for it and nor do I care for calculated psychological cruelty to cower them ... but surely we ought to be responsible parents and not allow this infant to grow up and into something which behaves even more badly when it will be even more difficult to defend ourselves - and others - from this vile behaviour ?

A " File on Four " documentary which explores the way that the police forces are becoming further armed - and their officers' lack of training ?

Probably bizarre from the point of view of mid-western Americans, the argument seems to be pre-occupied with the distances involved in making responses i.e. there are teams of armed officers located at intervals to serve across a radius of seventy miles or so. Clearly the gist of the police argument is that they want to carry arms - in which case all hell may break loose because it will legitimate carrying arms by everyone and so the levels of armed violence will rise.

[ Apparently Kinder plastic eggs in the hands of infants are regarded by some - in America - to me more dangerous than automatic assault rifles in the hands of crazed mad men ... and the next one up was - ]

" ... Sir Bernard announced the move to reassure the public and deter attackers following terrorist attacks in Europe. ... The Met has already said the number of armed officers will go up in London by 600 to 2,800. ...And a further 900 armed officers are planned to be in operation for the rest of England and Wales. ... The latest announcement comes after 84 people were killed when a lorry ploughed into a large crowd watching a fireworks display in Nice in the south of France last month. ... "

[ SO THE SOUTH WALES POLICE WILL BE ISSUED WITH HEAVY GOODS LORRIES IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO RETALIATE TO SUCH TERRORIST ATTACKS ? ]

The Guns do not kill The People_The People kill The People_If we could kill all of The People_Then The Guns could not kill The People_And then The Guns would be safe from The People
The Guns do not kill The People_
The People kill The People_
If we could kill all of The People_
Then The People could not kill The People_
And then The Guns would be safe from The People.

dai repwblic = Dai Saw = David B Lawrence : the author asserts his moral right - not to sue for copyright !

President Donald Trump has described the gunman who killed 59 people and injured 527 in Las Vegas on Sunday as "a sick man, a demented man".
Speaking at the White House, he said he would look at gun laws "as times goes by" but he did not elaborate.
Police are still trying to find out why Stephen Paddock, 64, opened fire on an open-air concert from the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay Hotel.
Police found 23 guns in his room and firearms and explosives at his home.
As yet, no clear reason for the killing has emerged and investigators have found no link to international terrorism. Some investigators have suggested Paddock had a history of mental illness, but this has not been confirmed.
_____
The Guns do not kill The People_
The People kill The People_
If The People could kill all of The People_
Then The People could not kill The People_
And then The Guns would be safe from The People.